Beijing National Stadium (Bird's Nest)

The main stadium of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, its saddle-shaped bowl wrapped in a woven lattice of steel like a bird's nest.

It covers 204,000 square meters and holds about 80,000 people, or 91,000 with temporary seats. Construction began in 2003 and 2004, and it was finished in June 2008 at a cost of about 428 million US dollars. After the Games it is owned and run by a company jointly held by the Beijing city assets office (58 percent) and CITIC Group (42 percent).

Why does it look like a nest?

The Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron won the design competition in 2003. Their design grew from a study of Chinese ceramics. Steel beams were meant to hide the supports for a retractable roof, so the team made them look randomly crisscrossed. The famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was an artistic consultant. The retractable roof was later dropped from the plans.

Two buildings in one

The stadium is really two separate structures standing 50 feet apart, a red concrete seating bowl and the outer steel frame around it. Twenty-four trussed columns wrap the bowl, and each one weighs 1,000 tons. It hosted the opening ceremonies of both the 2008 Summer and 2022 Winter Olympics.

Building and using the stadium

Ground was broken on 24 December 2003, and at the peak about 17,000 workers were on site. The stadium opened officially on 28 June 2008 and hosted the track and field events and the football final of the 2008 Games. The eastern and western stands are higher than the northern and southern ones to give better views. A rainwater collector works day and night, and after the water is cleaned it is used in and around the stadium. Pipes under the field gather heat from the ground to help with heating and cooling. In 2022 it hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympics.

On the globe

The model shows the saddle-shaped stadium wrapped in a lattice of steel beams; look for the nest-like oval.